A little later, when he was passing his mother’s door, he glanced in and saw her standing before the mirror in her evening gown of gray silk, with the foam-like ruffles of rose-point on her bosom and at her elbows, which were still round and young looking.

Catching his reflection in the glass, she called out in her crisp tones, “My dear boy, where on earth have you been?  You know we promised to dine with Julia, and then to go to those tableaux for the benefit of the children in Vienna.  She has worked so hard to make them a success that she would never forgive us if we stayed away.”

“Yes, I know.  I had forgotten,” he replied.  Why was he always forgetting?  Then he asked impulsively, while pity burned at white heat within him, “Is Father here?  I want to speak to him before we go out.”

“He came in an hour ago,” said Mrs. Culpeper; and as she spoke the mild leonine countenance of Mr. Culpeper, vaguely resembling some playful and domesticated king of beasts, appeared at the door of his dressing-room.

“Do you wish to see me, my boy?” he asked affectionately.  “We were just wondering if you had forgotten and stayed at the club.”

“No, I wasn’t at the club.  I’ve been looking over the Culpeper estate—­a part of it.”  Stephen’s voice trembled in spite of the effort he made to keep it impersonal and indifferent.  “Father, do you know anything about those old houses beyond Marshall Street?”

It was the peculiar distinction of Mr. Culpeper that, in a community where everybody talked all the time, he had been able to form the habit of silence.  While his acquaintances continually vociferated opinions, scandals, experiences, or anecdotes, he remained imperturbably reticent and subdued.  All that he responded now to Stephen’s outburst was, “Has anybody offered to buy them?”

“Why, what in the world!” exclaimed Mrs. Culpeper, who was neither reticent nor subdued.  From the depths of the mirror her bright brown eyes gazed back at her husband, while she fastened a cameo pin, containing the head of Minerva framed in pearls, in the rose-point on her bosom.

“To buy them?” repeated Stephen.  “Why, they are horrors, Father, to live in—­crumbling, insanitary horrors!  And yet the rent has been doubled in the last two or three years.”

From the mirror his mother’s face looked back at him, so small and clear and delicately tinted that it seemed to him merely an exaggerated copy of the cameo on her bosom, “I hope that means we shall have a little more to live on next year,” she said reflectively, while the expression that Mary Byrd impertinently called her “economic look” appeared in her eyes.  “What with the high cost of everything, and the low interest on Liberty Bonds, and the innumerable relief organizations to which one is simply forced to contribute, it has been almost impossible to make two ends meet.  Poor Mary Byrd hasn’t been able to give a single party this winter.”